


Once more into the breach

by eonism



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:53:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonism/pseuds/eonism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a familiar story, even if the pieces didn’t quite fit together the same. This was how Gary Mitchell met James T. Kirk, hit rock bottom, and decided to do it all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once more into the breach

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a rewrite of Gary Mitchell's backstory, based on the TOS novelizations, comic books, and various other non-canon source material. Clearly I have taken a lot of liberties with the timelines. There are also a few small references to Gary Lockwood in this story as well, the original actor to portray Gary in TOS. This story features Mitchell/Kirk, Kirk/McCoy, Mitchell/McCoy, Mitchell/Kirk/McCoy, Mitchell/Lee Kelso, and several references to Sulu/Chekov and Kevin Riley/Gaila.

The sky above Delta Vega burned electric. It was a fragmented borealis of blues and pinks and purples, all turned inside-out like a fading signal dying out in the wilderness. Gary Mitchell could taste the voltage on his tongue; feel the current in his fingertips where it ran from behind his eyes and down, spreading everywhere that the bitter chill couldn’t cut through. He was beyond that now, the heat and the cold and the need. At his feet Jim Kirk was bleeding in the snow and the Valiant was splitting overhead in a million tiny dancing pieces of shrapnel. Everything, from the redness spread across Jim’s bruised mouth in the shape of Gary’s fists to the last fireflies of the explosion gently falling down, just seemed right.

Gary could taste that too, and smiled.

“Hey.”

From the ground, Jim spat blood between his teeth and looked every bit the kicked dog. “Gary, you can stop this. Please.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“You like it?”

Gary’s eyes were blown-out in silver, catching the ember rain. Jim looked sick with himself, shook his head, and asked anyway.

“Like what, Gary?”

“What I’ve made here.”

This was a familiar story, even if the pieces didn’t quite fit together the same. The words were jumbled, the pictures disarticulated, facts and dates and smells and faces bleeding together, running to the floor and in the corners of Gary’s recollections. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to remember, just that the context had changed into something novel and alien, and he had to reimagine all the memories in new ways. This was Gary Reinvented in Universe 2.0. It just felt more honest that way.

But through the visceral kaleidoscope of past, present and other-time, other-Jim and other-Gary, he knew that it had something to do with the day he met Jim Kirk.

And so Jim lied and said, “Yeah, Gary. Of course.”

\--

There were concrete spires on the edge of Van Nuys, just where Los Angeles melted into the Santa Monica Mountains. That was what Gary always remembered most about Van Nuys, the way the city looked so tiny from the roof, whenever he crawled out of his bedroom window and sat alone at night to look at the stars. The endless concrete spires where his parents disappeared every day, twinkling from the pink of dusk to the blue of dawn. He had never seen them in person. He was certain he never wanted to.

His father Thomas worked in one of the skyscrapers, his mother Dana in another, during long hours that had them both home late for the dinner that his sister Chelsea prepared for the younger children after their homework was done. Chelsea never complained, each night that she cooked dinner for Gary and his little sister Hannah and put them to bed. Each day Chelsea earned a kiss on a cheek and a pat on the back from their mother when she finally stumbled home after a ten-hour day at the office. Gary knew she probably should have complained.

After his youngest sister Lauren was born, Gary knew he had to get away, too. Chelsea had already run away to college to study anthropology then, and to live with a boy with three holes punched in his nose that their father hated. She was twenty-two by the time she finally got away, having put her dreams and acceptance letters aside to watch the younger kids while their parents worked to maintain the lifestyle to which they were accustomed. It was Gary’s turn to watch Hannah and Lauren, because that was the way of things. No one even asked, and once their mother was ready to go back to work, Gary was given a set of keys, emergency numbers _just in case_ , and a pat on the back.

He was fourteen then, and had no interest in babysitting.

So each night, after dinner and homework and once the girls had gone to bed, Gary climbed out of his bedroom window to sit on the roof and chart the stars.

\--

Gary never stood out.

There wasn’t much of him to write home about, if one was ever so inclined. Long and lean like his father, with his mother’s lighter coloring and dark hair and eyes. Rounded eyes that looked a little wide sometimes like he had been staring into the sun, his face defined by the attractive but unassuming features of a (somewhat bored-looking) young man. His history and civics grades were only slightly above average. His logic and philosophy essays were only slightly above average. He didn’t bother to study most of the time, looking out the window across the classroom instead to where the city met the sky. There was little need to he discovered, when the answers just seemed to pop into his head most days, if he stared at his PADD long enough.

Even his girlfriends, plain and pretty as they were, coming from good homes with nice families, were only slightly above average, too. They liked his magic tricks, the sleight of hand he picked up here and there, when he could guess their cards or their favorite colors with just a glance. It was intuition and dumb luck that kept him afloat in school. It was the kindness of dumb girls that kept him company, too young to know a bad guy when they saw one. They probably resented that, most of all.

These things held little interest for Gary. Even his father’s disapproval and mother’s eye-rolls didn’t mean that much to him after a while. Not a whole lot did. The one thing he ever really cared about was the stars. Stellar cartography, navigation systems, tinkering with flight consoles pulled out of old ships from the junk yard outside El Centro. Gary made maps of constellations, read up on warp engine design instead of finishing his literature homework. He only paid attention in his science and math classes, because they were easy and they helped when he was piecing busted Federation hardware back together and thinking about the stars. He didn’t want to just read about starships, hauling their broken parts home to poke and prod at on Saturday afternoons, if only to see what made them tick. He wanted to make them scream, right through warp ten into the cold, cold black.

Then one day he was eighteen, out of school with a decent grade point average and a backyard full of salvaged scrap and the antique telescopes his father hated. Staring down another four years at home before Hannah was old enough to watch Lauren and he would be free to run away like Chelsea did, the sister he only saw through vids and on greeting card holidays. On Thanksgiving, sitting on the roof together drinking cheap beer, Chelsea smiled and toyed with her latest piercing. She had just been fighting with their father again, but she didn’t want to talk about that.

“You should join Starfleet,” she said instead. “Put all this junk you collect to good use.”

Gary just laughed. “Yeah, right. Starfleet is like a think-tank of geniuses and shit, Chels. You need aptitude tests off the charts for that.”

“You’d have them, if you ever bothered to take the entrance exam.”

Thumbing the lip of his bottle, he shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I doubt they’d have room for somebody like me. I’m not exactly special.”

“I think you should do it,” Chelsea said, still smiling. “You know you want to fly. I think you’d be really good at it.”

It would be two more Thanksgivings before Chelsea could will herself home again. Gary couldn’t blame her for that. Two days after she hugged him goodbye at the shuttle station, Gary found himself outside the Van Nuys Starfleet recruitment office. There were two men inside, older men in slick gray uniforms, one blonde and the other graying. Important-looking men. He stared at the bold lettering on the glass door – the wide rays of sunlight behind the Golden Gate Bridge, _Ex Atris, Scientia_ – and shoved his hands into the pockets of his thrift store bomber jacket and felt stupid about the whole thing. After ten minutes of staring, Gary licked his lips and walked away down the strip of Van Nuys Boulevard, where Los Angeles twinkled in the distance.

“Can I help you, son?”

Gary turned around, saw the man with the graying hair standing in the doorway, the door held open.

“I was just leaving, thanks,” Gary lied.

“You were out here for ten minutes. You must’ve had something on your mind.” The man smiled, a small sort-of smile, like he knew something Gary didn’t. And that almost never happened. “I’m sure you can waste another ten on me.”

After a moment, Gary nodded. That was how he met Christopher Pike and joined Starfleet, just like Chelsea said. And not unlike Chelsea, he had to run away first, from Van Nuys and Thomas and Dana Mitchell, but for different reasons altogether.

\--

All the psychologists and psychiatrists and physicians clucked their tongues whenever Gary’s name came up. They kept saying things like _world’s first_ and _highest recorded score_ and _off the charts_.  Gary never really knew what to make of that. Flight tests he could quantify and understand, spelled out in aptitude scores and piloting simulations. He was a skilled navigator by nature with a basic understanding of warp technology and a fire in his belly to know more. Pike had liked that about him, and that made Gary feel good.

Sitting in a sterile little room, staring at a sterile Doctor Elizabeth Dehner, Gary didn’t know what to feel.

“To be quite honest with you, Mr. Mitchell, I don’t know what to say,” she said. She was wearing a clean and pressed blue Sciences uniform, reading through his chart for the tenth time. She looked like every nice girl Gary ever dated but didn’t care about, blonde and blue-eyed and that sad kind of pretty. “Esper, Apperception, Duke-Heidelberg – your tests results are incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Is that good or bad?” Gary asked, feeling peculiarly naked under her eyes.

“Good or bad?” At that, she smiled. It seemed like a rare event at the time, like the muscles in her face weren’t used to it. “Mr. Mitchell, you’re uncanny.”

Gary Mitchell didn’t stand out until Starfleet. Then he started to shine.

\--

San Francisco meant freedom. Starfleet meant a home. There people knew his name.

The Academy Flight Range was run by Commander James Doyle, a big wall of a man who hated every cadet that walked through his shuttle bay. They were all raw cookie dough as far as he was concerned, and he worked them like dogs until they were made out of steel. Flight sims, drills, dry-runs and shuttle maneuvers. Being turned inside-out in cockpits and watching other pilots splatter their hopes and dreams on shaking hands and botched landings. Sometimes they splattered more than that, but it was never talked about on the deck. Gary Mitchell arrived as raw dough and within his first semester broke Doyle’s long-held record for successful maneuvers in a lunar orbit. That was when things started to change.

After every successful drill, his flight instructor Doyle slapped a fat hand on Gary’s back and grinned through his buck teeth, “You better watch it, kid. You’re going to put us other bubbas out of a job.” The upper classmen in the squadron hated Gary for that, in the not-too-subtle way that they glared when he walked by in the mess hall and on the quad between classes. They called him a bagger for all his flight time, accused him of blowing Doyle, taking it in the ass on weekends to stay on his good side. That was the some of the nicer gossip he had heard.

Gary didn’t care about any of it. Every day he passed their tables without a glance and took lunch with the junior classmen. Lee Kelso with his abundant laughter, Kevin Riley who was quick with the jokes, and Hikaru Sulu who seemed to be good for just about anything, from piloting a ship to growing a garden to fencing. Gary was one or two years older than each of them and they were easily impressed by anybody who had Doyle smiling after flight sims. And maybe Gary liked that about Kelso and Riley and Sulu most of all.

Gary was good at flying, beyond just the simple dumb luck and intuition he was known for. Better than he ever was at guessing games or magic tricks, or watching the sky from his rooftop as the stars slept between the concrete spires dotting the horizon. Flying was easy, in a way that few things were. He had a gift for it, the way the engine system thrummed behind him, the way the shuttle’s skeleton trembled gently whenever he banked on a tight turn. Gary felt it deeper than anybody ever could, just a few seconds ahead of the other pilots flanking him, like little flashes forward to tell him when he was too close to the next shuttle or when to cut the throttle. He was at home in a cockpit, the way he never was in Van Nuys.

Gary stopped going back to Van Nuys for Thanksgiving just like Chelsea did. It didn’t even occur to him to feel bad about it. By the time he came out of flight training and returned to San Francisco, he was solid gold, Van Nuys’ chief aeronautic export. Behind aviator sunglasses and the old bomber jacket he took with him when he enlisted, Gary walked around campus like nothing mattered. He aced flight sim after flight sim, until the upper classmen stopped talking to him altogether. Gary liked it better that way.

\--

It was getting easier and easier to lean on people.

To flash a smile and get out of trouble when a cop pulled him over for speeding, or tell a pretty girl exactly what she needed to hear to get her number. Whatever it was, whatever Gary wanted, he could get it if he wanted it badly enough. Like whistling or riding a bike, it was just a matter of practice makes perfect. And these days, Gary was a quick learner.

So when he took the seat across the desk of Delores from the base housing office, he told her just how badly he needed that bunk in the officer’s dorms. The big one, with a nice view of the city and no roommate to speak of, and she smiled and gave him the keycard. Grinning, he thanked Delores twice and left to move into his new room.

\--

Gary never spent much time in Los Angeles growing up. He was the stay-at-home type, content to drink his parents’ beer and make-out with his girlfriend Emily in the back of her dad’s borrowed car. The city always twinkled in the distance like an electric lure of alcohol and music and excess, promising things Gary could only dream of in the smutty machinations of a high school boy. But after putting Hannah and Lauren to bed, Gary was usually too tired to do much else but grope under Emily’s shirt on squeaky upholstered bench seats. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what he had.

San Francisco, on the other hand, was ripe for the taking.

Weekends were spent cruising bars with Kelso, Riley and Sulu, drinking beer and dancing with boys and girls. Gary liked the boys more than the girls, the way their skin smelled like sweat and whiskey, trying to fuck him through his clothes the way the nice girls back home wouldn’t dream of. It was easy to lose himself like that, to lick his lips and put his hands all over them and whisper hot and filthy in their ears about how much they wanted it. Because these boys did want it, a heat that he could feel slip like liquid behind his eyelids and down his neck in pins and needles, and it was the most amazing sensation Gary had ever known. It made them so much easier to lean on until he had them in the men’s room or a corner booth-seat out of the way, licking his way between their lips and rutting against them shamelessly, pulling his hair and coming for him. Just for him, because he said so and they wanted it and it was a beautiful, perfect cycle of want and need.

Afterwards it was on to another bar, Sulu already a little drunk as he hung off Riley’s shoulder, Kelso laughing harder than ever. For a few hours a night in San Francisco, the two pilots and two navigators could live like kings in the flush and sweat of neon and glitter. In that tiny slice of time, Gary Mitchell was the warm little center of everything.

\--

It was a Friday night in a cadet bar called The Red Room, as Gary would later recall, when something changed. It was the last week of leave before the new term, and he was eager to drink and fuck his way through his last hours of freedom. Gary tried to avoid cadet bars as a rule, tired of the same old faces from class every day, but Sulu said he wanted to stop in because he knew the bartender. Riley was chatting up the redheaded Orion girl from his Warp Theory class who was laughing at his jokes, and Kelso was discussing the finer points of good, old-fashioned American baseball with some guys from Philosophy. Sulu had apparently lied about the bartender, and was busying himself with some young-looking navigator drinking cranberry juice at a table in the back. Nursing his third beer at the bar, Gary was dying of boredom.

Across the bar, where some of his classmates were embarrassing themselves on the dance floor, Gary spotted someone new. Tall and well-built, blonde all over with big, stupid blue eyes, a tight t-shirt and even tighter jeans, like he was just begging everyone in the room to notice him. Gary couldn’t help himself. The blonde was alone it seemed, making his way through the crowd, not particularly interested in any of the bodies grinding against him beyond a quick and cursory glance. Sliding off his stool, Gary aimed to change that as he made his way onto the dance floor, edging into the herd until he found himself at the blonde’s back.

The music stopped between tracks. Around him, the crowd paused, took a deep breath. Then the music started up again and Gary put his hands on the blonde’s hips, turning him around.

“Hey,” he smiled. “You want to dance?”

The other man looked him up and down with a lick of his lips, which were fuller up close than Gary had anticipated. Tilting his chin up, his eyes got a little lidded, still big and stupid and blue, and he smirked crookedly. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I do.”

Above them the lights dimmed, changed from muted red to deep purple and the whole crowd pulsed around them to the thumping bass. Gary kept his hands on the blonde’s hips as they moved together, a slow grind bone and denim, sweating under their shirts and along the lines of their necks where the light lapped at their skin. The blonde danced like he just didn’t care, head tipped back, eyes shut, the heat coming off his body making Gary dizzy. Gary didn’t even have to whisper anything this time, didn’t have to lean or reach out. The hands on the other man’s body was enough to make him open to the press of Gary’s lips against his hair, the shell of his ear, turning the blonde around to mold their bodies together, chest-to-back. It was almost too easy.

“What’s your name?”

Gary splayed his fingers under the other man’s shirt, over the flat of his belly. The blonde caught him by the wrists, a little jumpy, and then settled again in with a lick of his lips. He looked at Gary from over his shoulder, eyes only half-open.

“What’s yours?”

“Touchy,” Gary smirked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before, and I’m really good with faces.”

“I come here every weekend, and I’ve never seen you here before.” The blonde smirked back, that same crooked little smile. “So you’re lying.”

At that, Gary shrugged. “That change things?”

“Not really.” A hand reached back to card through Gary’s hair, just enough for a handful. “It’s Jim. Jim Kirk.”

“Gary Mitchell.” Biting into the flesh of Jim’s ear, he reached for Jim’s belt buckle in a tug. “You want to get out of here?”

Before Jim had a chance to respond the song faded out, the lights flashed purple to pink. Jim moved away, just out of reach, not at all bothered by the fact Gary had just been pawing all over him. Something across the bar caught his eye in a jerk of his chin. Following Jim’s line of sight led Gary to some guy that had just walked into the bar, a few years older, brunette and broad-shouldered under a tired-looking jacket and jeans to match. Gary couldn’t help but feel a little left out.

“Meeting somebody?” he asked, a little colder than he meant to sound.

“Yeah,” Jim said, like it was nothing. “Kind of already made plans.”

“Your boyfriend must not like you dancing with strange boys, Jim Kirk.”

For it, Jim laughed. “I know your name, you’re hardly a stranger.” He clapped a hand onto Gary’s shoulder with a rise of his eyebrows. “See you around, Gary Mitchell.”

With a sick fascination Gary watched Jim Kirk walk away, throw an arm over Leonard McCoy’s shoulders and hang off like he belonged there, sweat making his t-shirt translucent where Gary’s hands had just been all over him. He felt a voyeur to the quiet little exhibition going on between them as Leonard sat at the bar to order two glasses of whiskey, spelled out in glances and touches and standing just a little too close. It was a bright hungry package of want and half-truths, conversations only half-had, and Jim Kirk was like its beating, sucking heart. With his stupidly blue eyes and his curved mouth and the way Leonard _just looked at him_ and the way he told Gary no, like it was nothing, when hardly anybody did that these days.

Leonard McCoy was going to go home and fuck Jim Kirk that night, Gary Mitchell knew that much. He also knew he would be next.

\--

It wasn’t until the new term started the following week that Gary met Jim Kirk again. Sliding into an open seat in Advanced Warp Theory, Gary tossed his aviators aside and yawned, still a little too drunk for his 0700 class. He didn’t even bother bringing his PADD to class anymore. It wasn’t worth the additional effort, not when the answers appeared out of thin air the way they always did these days, if he concentrated hard enough. The first day of class was no big deal, in any case, and Gary was already ready to go back to his dorm and sleep off the rest of the previous night’s tequila before Elementary Temporal Mechanics at 0930.

Three rows below was the familiar back of Jim Kirk’s blonde head. He was skimming through his PADD for the day’s assignments, the dictation application already running for lecture notes. Gary immediately sat up, forgetting all about the tequila still softening his brain. It was hard to pay attention to Commander Ngige’s sweeping pontification on gravimetric field displacement when he couldn’t keep his eyes off Jim. Once the clock above Ngige’s desk chimed, Gary slid out of his chair, down the steps between rows to the door where he followed Jim out into the hallway.

Right out of the engineering complex, across the quad to the mess hall on the other side of the campus. Jim took lunch at a table by himself, scrolling through his PADD until Gary slammed a tray down beside him and took up the nearest chair. Jim looked up, and then finally shook his head with that crooked smirk. Up close again, Gary could feel another heat coming off of him. Something like fire and stardust in soft focus, lapping at the edges of his eyelids and under his fingernails where the tequila didn’t quite dampen his perceptions. Too far away to get a solid feel for it, still too far down the line to understand.

Gary probably should have gotten up and walked away, but he always loved a challenge.

“Small world, huh?” Gary asked, leaning over into Jim’s space, looking him over from behind his sunglasses. “I guess they let just anybody into Advanced Warp Theory these days.”

“Or they let just anybody into The Red Room,” Jim said easily and tossed his PADD aside. “Gary, right?”

“And you’re Jim Kirk.” Gary pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Told you I was good with faces.”

“I can see that.”

“So, look, I was thinking. We’re in the same class, and we’re obviously pretty well-acquainted already, right? How about we be smart about this whole thing and work together? Help each other with assignments and all that. I’m really good at the subject, if I do say so myself.”

“Yeah, thanks, but I don’t think I need a tutor. Besides, you’re not that great a dancer.”

Gary chuckled. “Ouch. I don’t exactly remember being wowed by your physical prowess, either. Your ass, maybe, but not the dancing.”

“That’s because you were busy trying to get my pants off. Not that I was all that offended.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.”

“What’s settled?”

“I’ll meet you in the library after class on Wednesday. Don’t bother bringing your notes, I’ll have mine. I can probably break it down better than that windbag Ngige anyway.”

Along with the answers to the next three quizzes, but Gary didn’t say anything about that. Cheating was still frowned on in most circles.

“You seriously want to be my study-partner?” Jim asked, only half-kidding. “What, does that mean we’re going steady now?”

“Well, we can study, or we can go dancing. Whatever you feel like.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“You must have not gotten the memo yet, Kirk – I’m offering you a guaranteed hundred-percent in this class. So you ought to be a little nicer to me.”

“And you’re not going to let this go until I agree, right?”

“Basically.”

“And just why is that?”

“Because I like you, and I don’t like a lot of people. And because I don’t like a lot of people, I tend to lean on the ones I do to make sure they stay around. Consider it a compliment.” Standing from his seat, Gary gave Jim a wink and pushed his aviators down again. “See you around, Kirk.”

Shaking his head, Jim gave in with a smirk. “I’ll see you there, Mitchell.”

Leaving the mess hall, Gary forgot all about sleeping off the last of his tequila fog and cut across the campus to the registrar’s office. There a cute Andorian in records handed a copy of Jim Kirk’s personnel file over with a grin and a quirk of her antennae. All Gary had to do was lean on her desk with a smile and tell her how sweet it would be if she did him one teeny, tiny little favor. It was getting too easy sometimes, and after his courses Gary retreated to his bunk to read all about Kirk comma James Tiberius.

There was the last eleven minutes of the USS Kelvin and the dearly departed George Kirk, the daddy Jim never had. There was Winona Kirk, too, with her stern eyes but loving smile, and her cabinet of accolades for the years spent-off planet while George Samuel Jr. and little Jimmy stayed at home with Frank and his drinking.  Kodos and the fires when he cleansed Tarsus IV, six stays at the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center, two school expulsions for fighting, and even Christopher Pike. Pike who pulled Jim bloodied and half-drunk out of a bar in Iowa and shipped him off to San Francisco to make something of himself, just like he did for Gary in Van Nuys.

Jim Kirk had spent his whole life running toward the stars. Gary could appreciate that, more than most could. That was when he knew he couldn’t stay away from Jim. Not then, not ever.

\--

The semester passed in a liquid blur of flight drills, long nights out and coursework assignments. Sometimes Gary dreamt of fire, but he said nothing of that in the morning when he slid into the seat behind Jim in Advanced Warp Theory. Sometimes he still went out to dance with the lonely wild boys of San Francisco, with glitter in their eyes and sex on their minds, but mostly he thought of the stars and Jim Kirk and fucking him until he screamed.

\--

Jim and Gary stopped meeting up after class, and started hanging out on weekends instead. Gary didn’t need to study anyway. He always had the answers, even before their instructors could ask the questions. At first Gary brought his friends along, Kelso and Riley and Sulu, but that got old fast. Gary was getting bored of them, little by little, with their familiar jokes and hang-outs and personality quirks. With Sulu chasing that little twink navigator all over campus like a love-sick puppy and Riley spending more and more time with that Orion girl, there was little time for anything but the odd Saturday night out with the guys. And the one thing Gary hated more than anything was being bored.

But Jim, Jim was never boring. Jim liked to get trashed on school nights and fuck girls in the backs of cars and play poker and ride his bike on the weekends. Gary always liked that about Jim, that he just didn’t care. There was a kind of beauty in the recklessness, a charm in his sense of self-destruction. Everybody on campus knew Jim Kirk, because everybody knew about his test scores and his aptitude tests. They had all read about his dad or his mom, or they had a friend who had a friend who had fucked him or fought him, or both. He was like a rock star on campus, but he was the first to throw a punch or get a drink flung in his face, or end up in the drunk-tank for the night.

And so Gary just slung an arm over Jim’s shoulder, wiped the blood from his lip or pat at the collar of his whiskey-soaked shirt, and smiled.

“Easy, tiger,” he would always say. “Let’s go back to having fun.”

The only problem was Leonard McCoy, six years both their senior and climbing the ranks of Starfleet Medical, barring a nasty case of aviophobia. He was Jim’s best friend, well-adjusted in all the ways Jim wasn’t, and too put-together to be of use to guys like them. When Jim got thrown into the drunk-tank, it was Leonard that got him in the morning. When Jim was fucked-up after a fight, it was Leonard that took him home and put his face back together, even if he complained every minute of it. Leonard was the one trying to carve Jim into the approximation of an upstanding young man, something he could take home to meet the family. Jim was his pet project, his own little personal fixer-upper.

Jim didn’t see it, not the way Gary did. It was kind of pathetic. Jim could do so much better for himself than that.

They spent most of their time together, Jim and Leonard. They took meals between classes, went out for beers, and took leave on Jim’s bike to Yosemite and disappeared for days at a time. Sucking, fucking, whatever other filthy things that came to Gary’s mind when he saw them together, in the hallway after class or at a table in the mess or across a crowded bar when he didn’t dare get too close. If Gary was the devil on Jim’s shoulder, Leonard was the angel. Where Jim went, Leonard always eventually followed to pick up the pieces. And once Leonard showed up, Gary was always, inevitably, invisible.

Gary hadn’t been invisible since he left Van Nuys, and he wasn’t about to be again.

\--

It was almost too easy to revel in Jim’s self-destruction sometimes. A man could make a habit of it.

In a grubby bar on the edge of the city, Gary was on his second glass of tequila and feeling good about most things. Jim was on the next bar stool, trying his luck with a brunette in purple lipstick and a short, short dress. Leonard McCoy was nowhere to be found, and that was okay by Gary. After a half-hour of listening to the brunette giggle at Jim’s advances, they disappeared into the men’s room across the bar.

After two minutes, Gary slid off his stool and followed after.

Pressed against the rickety partition of a bathroom stall, Jim and the girl were kissing furiously, half-undressed already. Skirt hiked up over her wide hips, Jim’s hand in her underwear and rubbing her clit as she sighed, flushed already and moaning between their teeth. It took Jim a moment to notice Gary there, their eyes meeting across the bathroom in something that Gary couldn’t read, couldn’t get a bead on. It took another moment for the girl to finally notice Gary, shoving Jim away in a fit and pulling her skirt back down. She called the both of them a clever parade of insults under the circumstances and stormed out, shoving Gary hard for good measure.

Still red-faced, whether from want or shame or something else, Jim licked his lips. “What the fuck, Gary?”

“I was just curious.” Gary licked his lips, too. “So does your boyfriend know about what you do with all these girls?”

“Fuck you,” Jim all but spat, suddenly indignant. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever. Look, I don’t give a shit,” Gary said coolly, by way of conciliation. “I’m over this place. Let’s go somewhere else.”

Wiping the purple lipstick smear from his bottom lip, Jim nodded and said, “Yeah, okay.”

They never talked about the night again. Gary knew for a fact Jim never spoke a word of it to Leonard, and was glad for it.

\--

Gary wasn’t properly introduced to Leonard until a party across town, sitting in somebody’s apartment overlooking the city, a friend of Riley’s friend. Gary was still talking to Kevin Riley when it was convenient, but they didn’t see each other socially very much anymore. The thought didn’t bother Gary as much as he thought it would, sitting on a stranger’s sofa with a deck of cards while his squad was off getting drunk on whiskey in cheap recyclable cups. The party was boring like the music and his classmates were boring, but Gary kept that to himself as he shuffled through his cards and made the ace of clubs disappear.

“Hey.”

Gary looked up to find Leonard McCoy standing by the arm of the sofa, drink in hand, looking a little uncomfortable about the whole situation. Clucking his tongue, Gary tried to fight back the sharp stab of jealousy that he felt at the sight. Jealousy didn’t get anybody anywhere.

“You’re Jim’s friend, right?” Leonard asked. “Gary Mitchell?”

“Let me guess,” Gary smiled sweetly. “You’re Leonard?”

“Not much of a guess.” Setting his drink down, the doctor took up the empty space beside Gary. “I’ve seen you around a lot lately.”

“You, too.”

When you’re not fucking Jim like it’s going out of style, Gary didn’t say. He wasn’t jealous, after all.

In person, Leonard McCoy was better-looking than Gary had anticipated, a rugged kind of handsome despite the upstanding haircut and the close shave. Strong arms and shoulders, good build, good everything. Just like an upright Starfleet officer should embody, and Gary and Jim certainly weren’t most days.  Maybe that was what Jim liked about Leonard, that sense of decency that just rolled off of him in waves, even for all the complaining and the drinking. It was everything Jim didn’t see in himself, and Gary didn’t care about anymore. Not when he was one the best pilot on campus and he got whatever he wanted, when he wanted it.

Maybe it made Gary want to hate Leonard just that little bit more than he already did. But he didn’t say anything about that, not now.

“What’s with the cards?” Leonard lifted his chin to the deck. “I mean, yeah, the party’s pretty bad, but at least the beer’s free.”

“I know a few magic tricks,” Gary said passively. “I like to practice, keeps me sharp.”

Before Leonard could say anything else, Gary held the deck out.

“Pick a card.”

Leonard looked skeptical, but let out a little kind-of laugh just to be polite. “Um, I don’t know. Jack of hearts, I guess.”

Gary spread the cards out, turned the jack of hearts over. Shuffled the cards together then fanned them out face-up, no jack to be found. Shuffled them face-down again, and the jack appeared face-up in the spread. He smirked, if only just.

“Not bad,” Leonard admitted.

“I do try.” Gary reshuffled the deck. “Is Jim here?”

“I don’t know.” Leonard shrugged, reached for his drink to thumb the edge of his cup. “He said he might be by later.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Gary asked, as if he didn’t already know. “For Jim?”

“No.” At that Leonard straightened up, a little defensive. “Why?”

It was Gary’s turn to shrug. “You don’t seem like the party-going type.”

“Not really, no.” Leonard took a drink and swallowed. “But it’s not like we’re joined at the hip or anything.”

Gary just laughed at him. “Oh, that’s not what I’ve heard, Doctor.”

“Bones?”

Both men looked when Jim appeared beside the couch. He looked between them, a little hesitant, and put a hand on Leonard’s – _Bones_ ’ – shoulder before he could be bothered to acknowledge Gary. At his side Leonard’s faced tightened in a flash of anger, but said nothing about it with Jim there.

“Hey, Gary. I didn’t know you knew Bones.”

“I don’t,” Gary said with a pleasant smile. “We were just talking. About you, actually. Small world, right?”

“And I was just leaving.” Leonard stood, took his drink. “See you later, Gary.”

Gary watched Leonard herd Jim away from him, like Leonard was saving Jim, like he was always trying to save Jim. Gary wanted to go out, go dancing, and get drunk. Fuck some guy until he forgot all about Jim Kirk. Instead Gary found Kelso having another beer, laughing at one of Riley’s jokes and having a good time.

Lee Kelso was a local boy, as Gary knew, who didn’t roam far from home to take to the stars. He liked sports and classic movies, that traditional, Old Hollywood kind of handsome with good coloring and even better posture. Lee didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of Gary’s Kirk-induced fit. Somehow, a few beers later, they still found themselves in one of the bedrooms, lying across somebody’s coat, Gary’s hand down Lee’s jeans and Lee gripping his wrist like a vice. In another time and place, Gary probably would have felt bad about it.

“You ever fuck another man?” Gary asked, dipping his tongue into Lee’s open mouth as he stroked him feverishly on a spit-slick palm. “You ever have a man inside you? Make you come?”

Panting, Lee closed his eyes. “No. I just – I’ve never.”

This close, four beers in and needy all over, it seemed unfair to lean on Lee the way Gary did, but it didn’t stop him.

“You want me to make you feel good, baby? Get my dick in you, make you come for me? God, you look so good right now, just fucking hungry for it.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Lee sighed out, “fuck, Gary, _yes_.”

Yes, when Gary stretched him soft and wide on wet fingers and lube found in the bedside drawer. Yes, when Gary put Lee’s legs over his shoulders and fucked him. Slowly at first, because Lee was new to this, just until he was twisting and grunting in the sheets, then faster, harder, deeper, until Lee didn’t make a sound. Limp, flaccid dick sticky again his stomach from the orgasm Gary wrenched out of him, skin pink all over and lips bruised from kissing. With his dirty blonde hair and light-colored eyes, it was easy for Gary to lose himself, for just a moment, and think of what Jim would look like under him.

Then Gary came, making a mess of Lee’s skin and the borrowed sheets, and he couldn’t think of anything but fire.

\--

Jim got one-hundred-percent’s in all his course assignments and exams, Advanced Combat Training, Advanced Tactics, and Advanced Warp Theory. Gary stopped paying attention in class entirely, staring out the window instead until the next big flight drill. If ever asked a question or surprised with a quiz, he always knew the answer, plucking it out of thin air. Same result, just with less work involved, and more hours logged in the black. That was what mattered, everything out there in the stars.

Jim lived in the assigned texts, passed every test, and broke his back to make officer in the first three years. Gary didn’t have time, sliding between classes and nights out in his aviators and old bomber jacket and not caring about much of anything. It was one of the few differences between them these days.

\--

“Gary, we need to talk.”

Lee and Gary fucked for six weeks, making a regular thing out of it. They fucked in Gary’s bunk on school nights and in men’s rooms at bars on weekends and wherever else Gary said, when he said it. At first it was fun, because Lee was so willing, and looked so nice when his eyes got all wet as he was clumsily sucking Gary’s dick, wanting so much to please him. Then, like all things, it got boring, with Lee’s unsure hands and his hesitance, and the way he tired out so fast because he wasn’t used to taking dick as much as Gary loved giving it. The way he tried to kiss Gary afterwards, and sleep next to him, like there was anything more to them than Gary would let there be.

Every time Gary pushed Lee aside, brushed him off and sent him on his way, Lee felt just a little worse, and it showed. A little less wanted, with dirt on his knees and Gary’s come between his thighs, and someone else’s name on Gary’s lips. Not Jim Kirk, of course, because was never that stupid or sentimental, and Gary would never admit to something like that. Then Lee found Gary in his bunk one night, standing at the doorway with a hand on his hip, face a little pained like he had been rehearsing it all day. It was kind of cute, if Gary had any patience for that sort of thing. So he gestured flippantly, let Lee inside and dropped onto his mattress with a put-upon sigh.

“You don’t even care about me, do you?” Lee asked.

At that, Gary shrugged. “You mean, did I think we were going steady? No, Lee, I didn’t.”

“That’s not what I meant. You know that.”

“What, did you want me to hold your hand in the hallway? Leave notes in your locker?” Gary chuckled, a short, clipped laugh. “You want me to hold you after we fuck, tell you you’re the only one for me?”

“What did I ever do to you, Gary? Because I don’t deserve this kind of shit, especially not from you.”

“Well, you didn’t do much of anything, kind of just laid there – that was part of the problem, really.”

“Who the hell do you think you are, Gary?” Lee was mad, not just mad but furious, and that almost never happened. “You strut around like you don’t give a shit about anybody, but you still expect us to come running when you call, because you want the audience.”

“You think I need this, Lee? You think I need you, following me around, trying to be my boyfriend? Because if you do, then you’re sorely mistaken.”

Lee shook his head. “Look, I care about you, okay? Me, Kevin, Hikaru – we’re your friends. And this is so fucked up, Gary, you’re not going to have anybody left if you keep doing this.”

Gary stood up, got close to Lee. The way he did when he was leaning on Lee, or anybody else, but this time he didn’t want anything from him. He just wanted to hurt Lee, because he was there and it was easy.

“Then I guess I don’t need any of you.”

That did the trick, but Lee said nothing of it. Just narrowed his eyes and put his chin up, and made a tight line of his mouth that even Gary at his best couldn’t get past. “You’re such a fucking asshole, Gary Mitchell,” he said. “I’m sorry I ever met you.”

If Lee could have slammed the door he would have as he turned and walked out of Gary’s bunk. Gary never saw Lee after that, except for flight tests and squad meets. They never spoke, and Lee never looked him in the eye. He didn’t see Riley or Sulu, either, only in the hallway between classes when they walked by him like he didn’t exist anymore.

It was hard to find the urge to care, so Gary didn’t.

\--

On Deneb IV, everything changed.

Two weeks spent planet-side on leave after the hell of final exams and training exercises. Jim had clawed his way out of Advanced Tactics at the top of his class as Gary had coasted out of his courses, with a commendation from Doyle for most successfully completed maneuvers in a single term. The upper classmen still hated him. His friends still hated him. Gary still didn’t care. Most of their classmates had gone home for leave, packing their bags for two weeks with their families and friends. Van Nuys wasn’t an option for Gary and Jim never talked about Iowa or his brother or his mother, either, and Gary knew better than to ask.

So Gary slid up next to Jim in the mess hall during finals week and said, “Let’s go to Deneb IV next week and get completely trashed.”

Jim asked, “How trashed is trashed?”

“I plan on losing my pants and breaking at least seventeen local laws in the process.”

Jim smirked. “Then I’m in.”

From his PADD, Leonard looked up at Gary, who flashed him his sweetest smile. Jim didn’t seem to notice. Leonard made no mention of it, certainly not to Jim, and instead said, “Have fun puking your guts up. Don’t call me crying when you can’t make bail.”

Leonard had said goodbye to Jim Kirk the day after finals, heading back to Georgia to sort out custody of his four-year-old Joanna with his ex-wife. Gary hadn’t known about any of that. Jim never mentioned it, and it wasn’t like he was all that invested in the life and times of Leonard McCoy. Standing on the platform together at the shuttle station where Gary dropped Leonard off, only because Jim had asked him to, Gary resolved to behave himself. To being nice and watch their little pageant before Jim and Gary got on the next shuttle out to Deneb and never looked back.

They spent two weeks in and out of bars and trouble and police stations, during an outrageous assault on the nightlife of the Bandi capital city. Drinking until they couldn’t stand up, dancing with strangers, and racing through the desert at night in a rented car, the top down and radio on. Dust gritty on their lips and the sun just peeking out from behind the horizon, until the wireless receiver hit static and Gary’s jaw hurt from either laughing too much or getting punched in the face, or some combination of the two. After a while, watching Jim run their car into the dirt against the pink sunrise, none of it mattered.

It was just them, Gary and Jim, just like it should have been.

If Gary reached a hand across the space between their seats to touch the stubbled hinge of Jim’s strong jaw, sweep his fingers across Jim’s brow, push an errant piece of blonde hair away, Jim never said anything of it. He just swallowed hard, gave Gary a sideways look, and drove them to the next city. He wanted it, just like Gary wanted it. Like Gary always wanted it, since that night at The Red Room when he could feel the heat coming off of Jim like fire, but Gary never leaned on Jim. Not like that.

Jim had to come around in his own way, and Gary had all the time in the world.

\--

Two nights before they left Deneb, and Gary was driving in the desert for what felt like forever.

Jim was in the passenger seat, nursing a bottle of tequila and a purpled bruise on his cheek from the last bar, where he got into a fist-fight with a Klingon expat. Gary just laughed as Jim and the Klingon brawled until the three of them were finally thrown out into the street, then he clapped a hand on Jim’s back and said they needed to go somewhere they were appreciated. That was three hours ago. The sun was just going down and they were still too far from anything to pull over, so Gary just drove faster.

Sometime around 1900, when the dark had settled blue over the landscape, Gary could feel Jim’s eyes on him. Hot little holes burning through his clothes and into his skin, Jim’s fingers slack around the neck of the bottle, his lips wet and pressed together thoughtfully. Gary didn’t need to look over the see it, or to appreciate it as Jim leaned over between their seats, the bottle set aside and he seatbelt unbuckled. He kissed Gary softly at first, a tentative nip of tongue and teeth before slipping a hand around Gary’s neck to bring their mouths together fully, open and sloppy and wet.

“You’re a sweet little thing when you want to be,” Gary all but purred, gripping the steering wheel and keeping his eyes on the road.

Jim closed his eyes, breath hot on Gary’s mouth, and ran his teeth over Gary’s chin. With his free hand he pulled Gary’s belt buckle open and his zipper down, and licking his palm he reached into Gary’s jeans and briefs to stroke him off. Slow and firm and certain of himself, not at all like Lee with his hesitant little laughter and shaky fingers, because Jim knew exactly what he was doing. He twisted his wrist and squeezed the shaft just right, up and down again, cuffing the head of Gary’s dick to rub under the ridge with the ball of his thumb. Then he kissed Gary some more with a pleased little noise, tight and wet in the low of his throat, alternating the pressure and the rhythm just enough to have Gary panting.

For it Gary flicked his tongue out against Jim’s top lip, tasting the tequila still lingering there, and eased them off the main road. Into a flat stretch of desert, where he killed the engine and shut off the headlights, and pushed Jim back into his seat to climb over him. Eyes black in the dark, Jim licked his lips and raked his fingers down Gary’s back under his shirt.

“You want me to make you feel good, tiger?” Gary asked between their teeth, even though he already knew the answer. He had rehearsed it on Lee already, and every other boy in San Francisco he could get inside of. “Get my dick in you, make you come for me?”

Nodding, Jim brought his knees under Gary’s arms and bit down on the pilot’s bottom lip. “Yes.”

“Tell me you want it.” Gary gripped Jim’s hips and ground their bodies together, the feverish rubbing of denim and flesh and heat. “Tell me how much you want me inside you.”

“I want you,” Jim breathed out, pulling at Gary’s hair and arching up into the friction between them. “Wanna feel you inside me – fuck, I’ve wanted it for weeks.”

That brought Gary’s hips forward in a possessive snap. For it Jim grunted, made a fist of Gary’s shirt and tried to hang on. Gary wanted to know when and for how long, but the thought died quickly as he sucked in the startled, breathy noises Jim made as he dug his dick into Jim’s. They rutted that way across the front seat until they made a mess of themselves, before they finally untangled from one another and Gary drove them to the next city on the horizon.

In some seedy tourist-trap hotel, Gary Mitchell spent the next two days fucking Jim Kirk. Sometimes on his back where Gary could watch Jim’s expression as he took Gary’s dick, with that half-drunk, fuck-stupid look on his face, hungry for whatever Gary could give him. Or in Gary’s lap so he could watch Jim get himself off, bouncing up and down shamelessly, sweat running down his neck and chest in a hot pink stripe. Or on hands and knees, where Gary could reach Jim’s prostate and fuck the orgasm out of him without touching him, making the tightest, neediest little sounds Gary had ever heard in his life. Gary liked that the best, he found, and wrenched Jim’s head back by the hair and licked inside his mouth, enjoying the helpless noise Jim made when he did.

Gary fucked Jim until neither of them could get it up again, and Jim was too sore to do anything else, wet between his legs from spit and lube and come. On the third morning, before the shuttle was scheduled to leave, they lay on their backs in the ruined sheets and waited for their skin to cool, Jim’s breathing warm on Gary’s shoulder as he dozed. His dark lashes slanted, mouth flushed from bites and kisses, his skin smelling like cotton and sweat and Gary’s aftershave. For just an instant, with San Francisco and Starfleet and Van Nuys so far away, it was as perfect a moment as Gary had ever known.

Gary didn’t even think about the stars, or the fire that he saw whenever he closed his eyes. This close to Jim he didn’t care about that anymore, and brushing a sweaty piece of blonde hair from his face, kissed Jim’s eyelids.

\--

In San Francisco, Gary and Jim didn’t talk about Deben IV. Jim didn’t talk about Gary to Leonard, and Gary was okay with that. It made Deneb IV their little secret, something that belonged to them and no one else.

They went to classes like they always did, passing each other on the quad every day. Jim went back to taking lunches with Leonard in the mess hall and going out for beers together at night, and being his best friend. Gary sometimes spotted them across a crowded bar, when Jim could feel Gary’s eyes on him and turned to look over his shoulder. The somewhat pained way Jim looked back kept Gary away, and when Leonard noticed him, Gary knew enough to make himself scarce. Afterwards Jim went back to Leonard’s room, an arm slung over the doctor’s shoulder. He kissed Leonard at the doorway, softly and chastely with half-closed eyes, and followed him inside like nothing ever changed.

Then some nights there was a chime at Gary’s door, and when he opened it Jim was there with that same stupid, hungry look on his face. They kissed full and greedily, all tongue and teeth instead of the gentleness Jim saved for Leonard, and undressed each other in the pop of buttons and the stretch of seams. They stumbled over to Gary’s bed, where Gary usually pinned Jim under him to fuck him senseless, but sometimes Jim climbed on top instead to ride Gary’s dick. Head tossed back, mouth open, eyes closed, and all Gary could do was lick his lips and watch Jim make a mess of himself, just for him.

On occasion, when Jim was particularly greedy, he would turn Gary over into the pillows, lube up two fingers to prep him then slide home. Gary let Jim fuck him, just like that, fuck the fire right out of him until Jim was docile and pliant, willing to stay in Gary’s bed and sleep. They slept together then, as they had in that cheap little room, where Gary watched Jim with half-closed eyes and felt strangely, wholly at ease with himself. With Jim, with the entire set of circumstances, and whatever they had between them.

When he had Jim, Gary didn’t want for anything.

In the morning Jim got up to dress, maybe shower or get a bite to eat from Gary’s kitchen. Jim had classes, plans, training drills, and a million other things to do. Gary stayed in bed, because class was the last thing on his mind, and watched Jim like he always did. Eventually Gary got up to catch Jim by the wrist as he walked by and dragged him back to bed, and kissed him soundly. Firm at first, then soft, like he was signing his name into Jim’s mouth and dotting the ‘i,’for all of Starfleet – and Leonard McCoy – to see.

“I want you back here.” Not in Leonard’s bed, Gary didn’t say. “When I get home.”

Jim swallowed and didn’t meet Gary’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“It’s.” Jim sighed. “It’s complicated, Gary.”

“I’m not asking you to do something crazy, Jim. I’m telling you to come back.”

Eventually Jim nodded and sighed and said, “I’ll do what I can.”

Then Jim moved away, out of Gary’s reach, and put on his clothes to leave. On the nights that he did come back, it made the whole thing worth it. When he didn’t, Gary never said a word of it to Jim the next day, and slept alone like nothing had ever changed.

\--

“What did you want to be?”

Jim and Gary were sitting in an abandoned lot on the outskirts of the city, where Starfleet Headquarters was just a faint glimmer on the skyline, watching the stars. They were halfway through their six-pack when Jim asked Gary that. The sentimentality of the question caught Gary off-guard in a laugh and he took a sip of his beer. Whatever was or wasn’t going on between them, he certainly didn’t let it affect him when Jim was around.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know,” Jim said, like he was stupid to even ask. “What brought you here?”

Taking another sip, Gary shrugged unaffectedly. “I wanted to be a pilot.”

“Why?”

“Why do you care?”

“You left everything behind to join Starfleet. I just want to know why.”

Gary feigned ignorance, because it was easier than telling the truth. “I don’t know. It just seemed like a better alternative to going to college.”

“Like hell you don’t know.”

“Well, not all of us are Starfleet royalty, Jim. Sometimes we peons have to choose what we want to be when we grow up.”

At that, Jim looked hurt. “Fuck you, Gary.”

The air between them felt charged. After a moment, Gary gave up with a sigh.

“I wanted to fly since I was a kid.”

It wasn’t an apology, but Jim knew better than to ask for one. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was the only thing that ever made me feel…alive, I guess. Like there was a point to me being here, taking up space.” Gary shrugged again. “It made me feel special. And where I come from, I’m not special. I’m not anything.”

Jim pressed his lips together to wet them. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“What, not existing?”

“No, just – being _Gary_.”

Gary snorted, shook his head, and took another drink. “You wouldn’t like that other guy. I know I didn’t.”

“I’m not anything, either, you know. Not without Starfleet.” Jim looked up to the stars rather than at Gary, wiped his mouth with a knuckle. “I mean, I don’t even know how I got here most of the time. I just know I need to do this.”

To be like my father, Jim didn’t say. He didn’t have to. Gary already knew.

“You were born for it. I get that.” Gary shrugged again, traced the line of Jim’s sight to Orion’s Belt. “Believe me, I do.”

Silence thinned into the space between them. Gary chose to speak again.

“If they ever go crazy and give a ship, Jim, I’ll fly her for you,” he said, and meant it.

 “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I would.”

Jim nodded, and for just a moment, smiled. “I’d like that.”

Just them together, out in the black. It felt right to Gary, like all things with Jim felt right. Jim came around to Gary’s bunk that night, and for a few nights after. He slept there and left again in the morning, until the one day he stopped coming at all. Gary already knew why.

\--

Jim was making himself scarcer and scarcer.

He stopped coming to Gary’s bunk, stopped going out when Gary messaged him. Gary still saw Jim on campus or at the bars, when Jim was with Leonard or some pretty girl. Drinking, maybe dancing, and always holding his audience captive to him with little smirks and touches. Jim leaned on people, too. He liked having an audience just as much as Gary did; he just had different ways of going about it. At least Gary could admit what he was. Jim still couldn’t see it for himself.

Sometimes Jim met Gary’s eyes across the room, the air hot between them, charged to explode. Jim was always the first to turn away, and Gary just went back to his drinking and dancing. He tried not to think of Jim, or Leonard, or flying Jim’s tall ship for him one day. None of those things mattered when Gary had his hands on the hips of some wispy young party-boy, whispering sweet and terrible things into his ear. None of those things ever really mattered at all.

At night, Gary was dreaming of fire and ice and burnt-out starships and a cold, rocky planet. Sometimes Jim was there, battered and bruised in the snow, and sometimes he wasn’t. Still the sparks and the broken metal pieces rained down around Gary in perfect little reflections of light and color and heat, and for it, he felt whole. Waking up in a cold sweat, Gary touched his fingers to his lips where they tingled and burned, and waiting for his heart to slow, thought of Jim.

\--

To Kelso, Lee

From Mitchell, Gary

_Sorry_

If Lee ever got the message, he never told Gary. Gary figured had that much coming to him, at the very least.

\--

It was a Sunday night and another party for another faceless, nameless friend of a friend. San Francisco was getting smaller and smaller all the time, it seemed. Everywhere he went, somebody knew his name, and few people were still looking him in the eye. There was a keg of German beer in the kitchen and even better music on to dance to and not a strange face in sight. It was a little harrowing, but Gary got a cup of imported beer and put on a good face anyway. He had to. He was running out of faces to put on otherwise.

Gary was on his third cup of the expensive German beer and hanging his arm over the rail when Leonard found him on the balcony outside. He was standing on his toes and leaning himself against the heavy guardrail, watching the way the starts glittered over the city in a hundred, blinking eyes. The doctor slid up beside him, propped an elbow on the railing, and sighed. Just having him there made Gary bristle, but he didn’t dare let it show.

“Long time, no see, Doctor,” he said coolly. “How’s tricks?”

“Can’t complain.” Leonard took a drink from his own cup. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“That’s probably because you don’t go to parties.”

“Probably.”

Thumbing the edge of his cup, Leonard looked away, cleared his throat. The fake pleasantry of it all was too much to bear, and with a swallow of beer, Gary gave in.

“So how’s Jim?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I figured you’d be the best person to ask.” Leonard shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in a few days. I thought he was with you.”

“I haven’t seen Jim in two weeks, thanks. He decided he didn’t want me around anymore. I just guessed he was too busy fucking you.”

The doctor looked at little pained at that, but said nothing of it. “Look, I know you slept with him, alright? You don’t have to keep acting this way about it.”

“And just how am I acting, Doctor?”

“Like a spoiled little brat throwing a temper-tantrum.”

Gary laughed and took another drink. “Alright, well. Congratulations on the shrewd detective work there, champ. I’m pretty sure half of San Francisco has fucked Jim, too.”

“That’s not what I meant, Mitchell.”

“Is there a point to any of this, McCoy? Because if you came here to bond, you’re barking up the wrong everything.”

When Gary turned to walk away, Leonard caught him by the arm. Pulled him back, crowded him in against the railing, and leveled him a long, hard look.

“What the fuck is your problem, Gary? Because I don’t remember doing anything to you, let alone doing anything to deserve being treated like shit.”

“You know what, fuck you,” Gary said glibly. “I don’t have time to sort this out right now.”

“Well then make time.” Leonard pressed Gary back into the railing, invaded his space. “I’m tired of your put-upon bullshit, so climb off that goddamn cross and answer me.”

Gary’s hands made fists at his sides, clenching and unclenching, fight-or-flight. “Do you want to know what my problem is? You, McCoy, are my problem. You have it so fucking easy and you can’t even see it.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“ _He loves you_.”

The words were tight and ugly to say aloud, when it had taken months and months to try to will their power away. They stuck to the roof of Gary’s mouth like a paste when he finally forced them out, filling the space between him and Leonard until the balcony, the apartment, even the city felt too small. Gary didn’t care who heard them, watching through the patio door like vultures, and for it Leonard moved away with sagging shoulders. He looked heartbroken, and Gary – in the dark, sick hollow of his stomach – was glad for it.

“And you love him, too. I can just taste it when I see you two together, and I hate it, McCoy, I really do. Because, out of the rest of us, you’re the one he kept.”

Leonard had nothing to say to that. With his heart thumping wildly in his ears, Gary just shook his head and made motion for the door to escape. This time the doctor didn’t try to stop him, until he at last spoke.

“You don’t get it. He kept going back to you, too.”

That made Gary stop, close his eyes at the doorway.

“Don’t.”

“He didn’t throw either of us out, Gary. He ran, because that’s just what he does.”

“Shut the fuck up, McCoy.”

“So what’s it going to be? Because sitting around here hating me isn’t going to bring Jim back any faster.”

Gary left the party without another word to anyone. Before the night was out he found himself at Leonard’s door, his head full of bees, like some dangerous cocktail of curiosity and heartbreak. He didn’t know where Jim was and neither did Leonard, and for a few hours spent sweating in Leonard’s sheets, it didn’t matter. But if Gary closed his eyes and traced his tongue over the edge of Leonard’s top lip, he could swear he tasted Jim there.

\--

Jim didn’t come around for another week.

Gary spent that time in Leonard’s bunk, fucking each other instead. As the nights melted together in and out sleep, it was getting easier to see why Jim always came back to Leonard. Leonard had steady hands and a straight spine, and he always held Gary close when Leonard fucked him, like he was some soft, broken thing. It was almost endearing, in some quiet way that Gary never talked about, and he could see himself getting used to it if Leonard let him.

Just another thing him and Jim had in common, it seemed.

“Why do you let him do this?” Gary asked the ceiling one night as he took up Jim’s side of the bed.

“I’m not going to ask Jim to change,” Leonard said without looking at him. “And I’m not going to waste my time worrying about it, either. Jim’s Jim. I knew that going in.”

“But don’t you hate it?”

“Hate what?”

“Me.” Gary shrugged. “Everybody else Jim sleeps with.”

Leonard’s eyes were hard in the dark, harder than Gary had ever seen them before. “I’m not pining here, Gary, in case you haven’t noticed. If I didn’t want Jim, I wouldn’t be doing this. The same goes for him.”

“And if I want him, too?” Gary asked. He let a hand skim under the sheets, over Leonard’s stomach and down to his groin where his dick was still sticky to the inside of his thigh. Let his fingers trace the length of it, over the head in a feather’s touch. “Just to myself?”

Leonard breathed out a sigh and closed his eyes.  He had no answer. Gary didn’t need one.

\--

One sunny afternoon, Jim finally came back into Gary’s life. It was the same way he always came into Leonard’s, quietly and without apology or explanation. Gary was sitting on the quad and looking at the sky between the trees from beneath the shade of his aviators, like he sometimes did in his backyard in Van Nuys. Sprawled in the grass, a thumb up to block out the sun as he calculated launch trajectories for imaginary shuttle craft. Something long and Jim-shaped suddenly eclipsed him.

“Hey.”

Jim was standing there in uniform, hands in his pockets, looking down at Gary with those stupid, sad eyes. It was infuriatingly charming, like most things about Jim Kirk tended to be. It was hard to be mad when Jim looked like that, not that Gary was even mad. He didn’t know what to call it anymore.

“Hey.” Gary pushed his sunglasses up and resolved to act like he didn’t care. “So where’d you fuck off to that was so important you couldn’t call?”

“I didn’t fuck off anywhere.” Jim took up a patch of grass next to Gary, tried not to look him in the eye. “We need to talk.”

“No, we really don’t.”

“Yeah, we do.”

After a moment, Gary sighed. “Have you seen your boyfriend yet?”

Jim nodded.

“So you know I’ve been fucking him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what does that feel like?” he asked. “Having me in the middle of everything like that?”

There was no venom in Gary’s voice, no jealousy. Just the same naked curiosity that had him crawling in and out of Leonard’s bed for the last week. Then it was Jim’s turn to sigh.

“I want to see you again.”

“What, like, socially? Do you want to set up a bridge game or something?”

“Fuck you, Gary, you know what I mean.”

Amusing himself with a blade of grass, Gary plucked it out of the dirt and rolled it between his fingers. “And what does McCoy think of all this?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

Jim licked his lips, angled his head the way he did when he was bargaining for something. When he wanted something so bad he could taste it. Gary used to love that look, when he thought it was meant for him. “You can’t make me choose, Gary.”

“I’m not asking you to choose, Jim. I’m asking you to fucking pick something and stick with it. And if McCoy won’t say it then I will.”

“And what do you want? Out of this – out of all of it.”

Considering the blade of grass, Gary flicked it away and watched it flutter to the ground. “Ultimately? I want you. Just you, Jim. Back in my bed, night after night, because you know exactly where you belong.” After a moment, he shrugged. “But I know I can’t have that, because you want McCoy more. You always have, and you always will.”

Jim swallowed. “Gary.”

“And if that means I get to keep you, then I’ll take him, too.” After a moment, Gary felt his mouth slit open in a grin that he hadn’t intended. “But you don’t want that, do you, Jim? Because you don’t really want me, you just want me to watch you – like you have McCoy and everybody else watching you. We both just want a fucking audience, so we won’t notice how empty we feel when nobody’s looking.”

For just a moment, Jim looked the way he did in Gary’s dreams. Eyes wet, brow knitted, pained but from something other than the blood in the snow and the sparks raining down on them. It was the way George Kirk must have looked before he died alone in the black, the way Winona must have when she learned her baby boy was running off into the space like his father before him. Because nobody told Jim Kirk no, not since he ran away from Iowa for Starfleet and greatness and a tall ship to sail away on. And for just a moment, Gary was pleased to be the one to finally do it.

The one thing Gary didn’t see coming was Jim fisting his hands in Gary’s uniform shirt, dragging him close to kiss. Sitting there on the quad, in front of their lower classmen, God, and whoever else might have been looking. Jim kissed him until they were panting, hands tangled in fabric and hair, before he let Gary go to press their foreheads together, eyes closed and lips bruised.

“Come over,” Jim breathed out. “Tonight.”

Catching his breath, Gary nodded, and had nothing else to say.

\--

Leonard was the one who answered Jim’s door when Gary arrived. His face was unreadable, shoulders tense under a white long-sleeved t-shirt. Gary hadn’t seen Leonard since the last time they had sex, when he held Leonard by the hips and fucked him hard across the mattress so that neither of them could think of anything, let alone Jim. He didn’t know what to expect of Leonard now, what he and Jim had or hadn’t talked about, so leaning across the threshold he took a gamble and kissed the doctor. Slowly, gently, and biding his time, just until Leonard relaxed and let a hand rest on Gary’s neck.

“Hey,” Gary said once they parted, looking down at Leonard’s mouth then up at his eyes.

“Hey.” Leonard swallowed and nodded, and moved aside.

It felt like a truce. Gary found himself surprisingly okay with that. 

Jim was sitting on the foot of his bed when Gary walked in, getting up to his feet to meet him. He pressed his lips together to wet them, anxious, unsure of himself in a way that Gary never saw. It didn’t suit him. Stepping close, Gary swallowed, looked Jim over, and reached for Jim’s shirt to slip it off. Jim let himself be undressed, just like that, and smirked a little crookedly as he threaded a hand across the back of Gary’s scalp to kiss him.

“Hi.”

The other hand reached past Gary for Leonard, pulling him close, because wherever Jim led, he followed. Gary watched as Jim and Leonard kissed, slow and full, all lips and tongue and patience. It was just as Gary had imagined it would be to kiss somebody one loved, drawn to their intimacy like a voyeur.  A hand on Leonard’s arm and another on Jim’s chest kept them to him, indulging in the care and the closeness of it before Jim leaned in to kiss Gary again. Jim skimmed under Gary’s shirt to rake blunt nails over his chest and stomach and Leonard positioned himself at Jim’s back, hands on his hips, his shoulders. He teethed at the hollow of Jim’s neck, watching Gary under slanted lashes.

With Jim between them, he knew Leonard always would. 

Reaching out to run a hand across Leonard’s scalp, Gary angled his head to kiss him, sighed out a breath, and said, “I want to watch you together.”

It was something like a peace offering, agreeing to stay at arm’s length as Jim went on elbows and knees on the mattress, ass-up, his mouth open and eyes closed as Leonard fucked him hard and slow. There was a sweetness to it Gary had never seen before from either man, a polite, well-understood need underscoring the hand petting Jim’s chest, the fingers gripping Leonard’s thigh, rooting them there, in that place. Lying at Jim’s side, a hand on his back to feel every clench of muscle and slide of bone, Gary could practically taste it. He let his free hand wander, up Jim’s neck to his hair, curiously tracing the edges of his cheekbones before slipping over his lips and teeth.

Opening his eyes Jim bit down into the pad of Gary’s thumb, cheeks flushed, eyes wet as he took the digit between his teeth to suck it. He was already completely ruined, by Leonard’s mouth and his body and his dick, and it was fascinating to watch. Gary smiled and kissed him and swallowed every soft hungry sound Jim made, letting his hands run all over Jim’s tight, shaking body, enjoying every moment of it. When Leonard came Gary kissed him too, harder, fiercer than before, trading positions as Leonard lay back across the bed to catch his breath. Gary watched Leonard, the way the doctor watched him, moving between Jim’s legs and turning him over onto his back. What was Leonard’s was Gary’s now.

Jim hadn’t yet come, flaccid, limbs slack and useless, still panting and open and wet. He licked his lips and reached to grab Gary’s arms, pulling him closer, hungry for it the way he had been for Leonard. The sight of it, the bare need of it went right to Gary’s dick in a start and he pulled Jim’s legs around his hips, slicked himself on a palm of lubricant, and slid home. Something possessive tightened in Leonard’s face, sitting up to watch Gary piston in and out of Jim, and Jim’s beautiful, fuck-drunk expression. If Jim was ruined before, now he was destroyed, because anything less wasn’t good enough if he didn’t have them together. And Gary reached for Leonard again to kiss him, and Leonard kissed Jim, their hands tangled in hair and moving over skin, bodies making shapes in the dark.

Gary and Leonard and Jim in the middle, just as it needed to be. They slept the same way, a tangle of arms and legs in the mess made of the sheets, Jim wedged against Leonard’s shoulder and Gary’s chest. That night Gary dreamt of burning ships and snow and dying planets, and Jim. Jim, his Jim – their Jim – in a great gleaming starship, sailing into the black out of a blinding, perfect explosion. When he woke in a cold sweat, he knew something was about to change, just not know what or when or why.

The unknowing was unbearable, but somehow, in the back of his mind, Gary knew he might not survive whatever was coming next.

\--

For weeks things stayed the same.

Gary found himself living in the middle of whatever Jim and Leonard had between them, carving out spaces for himself because Jim would never, ever choose. Jim loved both of them, in his own way and by his own means. Leonard he loved tender and slow, as fully and thoroughly Gary had ever seen. He always careful, for fear that what they had would shatter if he made the wrong move, said the wrong thing, tripping all over himself to keep Leonard there and his. Gary was different, and Gary knew that. Jim loved him like Gary loved Jim, fast and hard and hungry, because they were more alike than Jim realized and Leonard ever wanted to say.

But in the dark Jim would kiss them both, with the wet eyes and forgiving mouth of a man contented, and tell them to stay. He would trace the ridges of Leonard’s knuckles with one hand and the thin skin of Gary’s wrist with the other, pull the covers over them and they would sleep. Sometimes, over breakfast on the weekends at Leonard’s favorite little corner diner, or at Gary’s favorite bar for a few beers, they could just sit together and talk and laugh, and it felt normal. It felt okay, like they could be happy like this, the three of them. Because Jim needed them and they needed Jim and the rest were just details.

Gary still dreamt of fire, waking at night to the sounds of screams fading in the black. He never talked about it in the morning as he dressed to leave, or between classes whenever he saw them on campus and they pretended to just be friends. It was too hard to explain, so Gary didn’t. During the day he went to class and flight drills, and at night he went out and slept in borrowed beds and smiled like nothing had ever changed. Jim slept with his head against Gary’s shoulder and Leonard with his back to them, and Gary took what he could get.

He might die any day now, and he was surer and surer that it had something to do with Jim.

One morning, Jim sat on the edge of the bed (Leonard’s this time) and laced up his boots and said nothing. This was the day Jim was scheduled to take the Kobayashi Maru for the second time, having already failed the first. He had asked Leonard to be there and not Gary, but that didn’t matter. Gary knew the score when it came to things like that.

Leonard was long gone by then, disappearing to a morning shift at the medical center and they were alone, just the bed and the tousled sheets between them. Dressing at the closet, Gary got a sudden, cold stab in his gut. It was the same bad feeling he got in the cockpit right before a sensory malfunction or a miscalculation, competing signals telling him to speed up, slow down, veer right, change heading. Pulling his shirt down over his head, he took a deep breath, tapped a hand on his mouth, and made a decision. Whether or not he would regret it, Gary didn’t know, and there was very little he didn’t know anymore.

“You know, Doyle’s got an open slot at the range to help instruct some drills over the next few weeks. He wants me on it for some advanced maneuvers he’s putting the new recruits through.” It wasn’t a lie. Doyle had asked him and Gary hadn’t agreed yet, because things planet-side had been taking up his attention. Now he planned to go to Doyle’s office and fly with him to the range on the first shuttle out, just to get some space between him and Jim and this slow, cold dread. “I think I’ll take him up on it.”

“Yeah?” Jim asked from the bed.

Smoothing out the creases from his uniform, Gary tried to be as casual as possible. “Yeah. It’d be a good excuse to make some rookies cry, could be fun.”

“Yeah, if that’s your definition of fun,” Jim smirked. “How long will you be gone?”

“Three weeks, maybe a little less.” Maybe a little more, but Gary was okay with that. “It’s no big deal.”

“Then, yeah, go do it.” Jim stood and pulled on his shirt. “Let me know when you leave, okay?”

“Of course,” Gary sort-of smiled. “I wouldn’t just ditch without saying goodbye.”

“You better not,” Jim said, moving in to nip gently at Gary’s mouth. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“You’d still want me around?” Considering Jim’s lips, Gary looked up to meet his eyes, got him by the elbows to keep him close. “Three weeks is quite a while. You might change your mind.”

“I won’t,” Jim said and meant it. “You know that.”

At that, Gary smirked, tight and bitter. “You’d be surprised how little I know some days, Jim.”

By the next morning Gary was on a shuttle to the flight range, but not before spending the night in Jim’s bed, watching Leonard watch Jim suck him off. It was a small consolation prize before disappearing from San Francisco, leaving them together and finding himself in front of ten rookie pilots. Just wads of raw cookie dough, useless and sloppy and stupid until they could prove themselves otherwise. Three weeks turned to four, then five, but Gary was alright with it, sleeping and taking meals and spending his off-time alone. It was quiet at the flight range, less noise to contend with, fewer voices trickling in and out of his head in bars and classrooms and on crowded streets. It was alarmingly peaceful, and Gary figured it was time for a bit of that in his life.

Two pilots washed out by the sixth week, another blew a landing and spent a week in a bio-bed being treated for burns. The ones that made it were carved out of steel by the time Gary was done with them. For that, he was proud, and he wasn’t proud of much. Word from back home was that Jim was working on his third try at the Kobayashi Maru, and he had something up his sleeve to do with Kevin Riley’s little Orion girl. That was Jim’s bad streak showing again, despite Leonard’s best efforts, and Gary could feel just a bit proud of that, too.

On a morning at 0930, Gary was sitting in the mess, drinking his second cup of coffee and waiting for Doyle to finish up with his log updates. There were three scheduled rounds of flight tests ahead of them, and Gary was ready for it. Out in the black beyond the station’s bay windows something glinted in his peripheral. Twenty, maybe thirty shuttles sprinted away from Earth’s orbit to the fleet docking station above where twelve ships waited, carrying everyone he knew from San Francisco. That cold feeling punched Gary in the gut again, visions like garbled transmissions jumping and crackling behind his eyes, as he stood to press a hand to the window.

Fire and burning ships and blood in the snow.

“Jim.”

\--

Nero came from the future to put a black hole in Vulcan, and Jim Kirk came back to Earth a hero.

Word of the attack on Vulcan came down the line too late for Gary to get on a shuttle and get onboard a starship and warp out into the fray. He was with Doyle at the range with a squad too new to go out in the black like that. It didn’t keep Gary from pacing his quarters in his off-time, hoping for some message from someone that the entire fleet hadn’t been burnt out of the sky. Then word got back on the third day: Twelve ships went out and only the Enterprise came home, one James Tiberius Kirk in the captain’s chair after fighting his way to the top to save Captain Pike and stop Nero from attacking Earth. Captain of his own ship, just like he always wanted.

When the communique finally arrived, late in the scramble and the chaos that ensued, Gary learned that he would have gone to the Farragut. He would have proudly served under Captain Nakamura for forty-four minutes and been blown out of the sky over Vulcan. There was little sense of victory in that knowledge, just a cold sense of resignation. Everything in San Francisco was commendation ceremonies and ticker-tape, and Gary got on the last shuttle out to find Jim with a bruised eye and a split lip above his crisp new dress uniform, grinning like a kid on Christmas. They met at the shuttle station and when Gary kissed Jim on the platform, he didn’t care who saw them. For just a moment, everything felt like it should have been.

“You should’ve been there,” Jim said over beers that night in a tiny little bar where nobody knew their names or faces. Gary knew the story from the reports but Jim still told him the whole thing, like a soldier come back from war, or a great adventurer with a bag of treasures over his shoulder. It suited him. “Not stuck on the flight deck with that lunatic Doyle making cadets cry.”

Jim was still wearing the stupid medal Admiral Barnett had pinned to his chest that morning. Gary still had three assignment requests flagged to his personnel jacket, but he said nothing of that. Jim’s stories were more important.

“Yeah, well,” Gary chuckled into the mouth of his bottle as he took a drink. “I didn’t have McCoy there to smuggle me onboard the Enterprise, otherwise my part of the story would have been much less exciting.”

“That did help a bit.” Jim laughed, something he hadn’t done much of lately. “Still, you should’ve seen it, Gary. All of it. We were kind of awesome.”

“That’s what I hear.” Gary flicked Jim’s medal. “I kind of doubt they hand these things out to just anybody these days.”

Licking the beer from his lips, Jim straightened up in his chair. Like he had been practicing this in his head all day, and Gary had a feeling he had. “I want you there, Gary.”

“Want me where?”

“On the Enterprise. She’s mine now. I get to make staff requests, and I’m going to ask for you.” He looked so eager, with those big, stupid eyes, like he could offer Gary everything if he could. “I’m already processing the request forms, so shut up and pack your bags.”

Gary smiled unthinkingly. It was second nature by then, something he did the hide pain or disappointment, and he shook his head. “That’s a nice thought, Jim, but it’s a little late.”

“What’re you talking about? I thought this is what you wanted.”

“It is, but I’ve got three other captains requesting me for assignment. They’re rebuilding the fleet and they need experienced pilots. Captain Shore is taking over command of the Aurora and she’s asked for me personally.”

“The Aurora? That’s a survey ship, Gary. What the hell are you going to do on a survey ship, collect rocks and soil samples for five years?”

“I don’t know, but that’s how it’s going to be.”

“That’s bullshit. I can talk to Pike, the admiralty – I can fix it.”

“What’s to fix, Jim?” Gary shrugged and smiled again. “Besides, what exactly is it that you expect me to be doing on the Enterprise? Sleeping in your bunk, keeping you entertained while McCoy’s on duty?”

Jim looked hurt by that. A small part of Gary liked that he still had that effect on Jim.

“It’s not like that, Gary, so fuck you.”

“So what’s it like? As long as you have him, you don’t need me.”

“But I _want_ _you_ ,” Jim said, reaching out to grip Gary’s wrist. “I want the both of you. We’ve made it work so far, haven’t we? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

“There’s a part of me that believes that, Jim, but I also know that some days I think you could be the death of me. And I already dodged a bullet with the Farragut; I’m not ready to try my luck again just yet.”

Leaning in, Jim rubbed the ball of his thumb over the thin skin at the inside of Gary’s wrist. Just like what he did in bed when he pulled Gary and Leonard close to him, to keep them to himself. It had to be cheating, because Gary had no defense against that.

“I won’t let that happen,” Jim said, just like a promise.

“I see it, you know, in my dreams.” Licking his lips, Gary shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know what’s going on but people are dying and everything’s on fire, and you’re there, Jim. And I think you’re the one that gets me killed.”

“They’re just dreams, Gary.”

“Yeah, but they’re pretty real to me.”

Squeezing Gary’s wrist, Jim swallowed. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, or Bones, or anybody else on that ship. You know that.”

For a moment, Gary thought about leaving. About getting on the Aurora and flying far away from Jim Kirk, but in the pit of his gut, he knew this had all happened before. Another time, another Jim and Gary, when Jim asked him to follow and Gary went without question. He didn’t say no then, and looking at Jim – his stupid, earnest Jim – Gary couldn’t say no now.

So he just smiled, and said, “Okay, Captain.”


End file.
